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THE 

DIVINE ORIGIN 

OF THE 

BIBLE 

(THE GENERAL ARGUMENT) 

BY 

V 

Prof. BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD, D. D. 



» «<•» 



PHILADELPHIA 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 

1334 CHESTNUT STREET 
*Q£/ *» ** Ssg9* 



No. 210 
THE 



DIVINE ORIGIN 



OF THE 



BIBLE 



(THE GENERAL ARGUMENT) 

BY 

PROF. BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD, D.D. 



PHILADELPHIA 
PBESBYTEBIAN BOAED OE PUBLICATION 

No. 1334 CHESTNUT STREET 



$54 



SO 



COPYRIGHT, 1882, BY 

THE TRUSTEES OP THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION. 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypera and Electrotype™, Philada. 



No. 210. 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 



When the Christian asserts his faith in the 
divine origin of his Bible, he does not mean to 
deny that it was composed and written by men 
or that it was given by men to the world. He 
believes that the marks of its human origin are 
ineradicably stamped on every page of the whole 
volume. He means to state only that it is not 
merely human in its origin. If asked where and 
how the divine has entered this divine-human 
book, he must reply : " Everywhere, and in 
almost every way conceivable." Throughout 
the whole preparation of the material to be 
written and of the men to write it ; throughout 
the whole process of the gathering and classifi- 
cation and use of the material by the writers ; 
throughout the whole process of the actual writ- 
ing, — he sees at work divine influences of the 
most varied kinds, extending all the way from 
simply providential superintendence and spirit- 
ual illumination to direct revelation and inspira- 
tion. 

l* 5 



6 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF TlxE BIBLE. 

It is of great importance to distinguish be- 
tween these various ways in which the divine 
has been active in originating the Scriptures, 
but it is of vastly greater importance to fix the 
previous fact that it is in the Scriptures at all 
and has entered them in any way. The present 
essay aims, therefore, without raising any of the 
many questions which concern the distinguishing 
of the various activities of God in originating 
his Scriptures, to busy itself with the one pre- 
vious question : Is there reason to believe that God 
has been concerned at all in the origin of the 
Bible? 

The question thus proposed is a very general 
one. And it is. a very immense one — almost 
limitless. It is, of course, utterly impossible to 
do more than touch upon it in any reasonable 
space, and all that could be urged in a single 
paper or in any reasonably circumscribed series 
of papers would bear a very small proportion to 
all that might be urged — to the mighty case that 
could be made out. No attempt can be made, 
therefore, toward fullness of treatment. A series 
of propositions most boldly stated wdll only be 
laid down one after the other, and it will be left 
to the reader to develop and illustrate them and 
bring out their combined force, which will, how- 
ever, it is hoped, be immediately partly evident 



THE DIVIDE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 7 

from their simple statement. An effort will also 
be made, in the choice of the propositions and 
their ordering, to frame an argument of a kind 
which will demand, as of right, entrance into 
every mind ; one, therefore, which will depend 
for its force on no original assumptions, but will 
begin rather with simple and patent facts — will 
simply put these facts together and then inquire 
what kind of facts they are and what they im- 
ply. Thus the reasoning will take the form of 
an inquiry rather than an argument — of an in- 
duction rather than a demonstration. The con- 
clusions reached may not be so sharply and 
accurately defined as if reached by other methods, 
but they have the advantage of being obtained 
by a process to every step of which every man's 
mind ought to be open. 

Our purpose is to look upon the Bible simply 
as one of the facts of the universe, of which 
every theory of the universe must take account, 
and for which, just as surely as for gravitation, 
it must make account or itself die, and then ask 
(and press the question) : What kind of a cause 
must be assumed to account for it just as it is 
and just as it arose in the world? Thus we may 
inductively come to an answer to the query: 
" Must we assume superhuman activities at 
work in the genesis of this book?" 



8 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

Without further introduction, we begin the 
inquiry at once. 

I. The History of the Bible. 

1. The basal fact from which our inquiry 
takes its start is the very indisputable and patent 
one that in the world there is such a book as 
The Bible. There is a definite volume, well 
known and always the same in contents, about 
which there need be no mistake, which goes un- 
der this name, and under this name is accessible 
to all. This very patent fact is the first that we 
need to notice. 

2. It is another fact, hardly less patent than 
the last, that this book occupies a unique posi- 
tion in the world of civilized man. No other 
book stands to-day among men for what the 
Bible stands for. We are not asserting here 
that it has a right to the position it occupies or 
the power it exerts : we simply assert that it is 
undeniable that it holds that position and exer- 
cises that power. 

The legislation of civilized nations is pro- 
foundly affected by its teaching ; the social hab- 
its of cultured people are largely determined by 
its scheme of life ; the governmental forms of 
powerful countries are built on its principles, 
and their functions are carried on under its 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 9 

sanctions. Rulers are entrusted with the exer- 
cise of their powers, witnesses are credited in the 
deposition of their testimony, only after oaths 
sworn upon or according to it. Everywhere it 
has percolated through the fabric of civilization, 
and modern society is built up upon the lines 
drawn by it. 

Still further, where it most dominates, there is 
most life. It is the great Protestant nations — 
those who most rest upon this book — which are 
the most prominent nations, the most full of 
abounding life and enterprising energy, the most 
impressive on the destinies of man. It is even 
the pioneer of civilization ; instead of following, 
it breaks the way for material advancement. 
Go where you will, if you find life, you will find 
also the Bible ; and you will find it in the very 
midst of the organism. You will find it in the 
hall of legislation, and in the laws that are there 
framed ; in the courts of justice, and in the jus- 
tice that is there administered ; in the colleges 
of learning, and in the learning that is there im- 
parted ; at the home-firesides, and in the moral 
training and homely virtues which are there in- 
culcated. In a word, it is, as no other book has 
ever been to a single nation, bound up with all 
civilization and progress and culture. 

3. It is worth our notice, still further, that this 



10 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

position of power and influence has been attained 
and held by the Bible through a most remark- 
able history. Confined for ages to a rough, iso- 
lated corner of the globe, in the keeping of a 
small and peculiar tribe of men, it almost with- 
out a moment's warning, like a great lake re- 
ceiving a new accession of waters, immediately 
on completion, burst all boundaries and deluged 
the world. It came commended by no external 
pomp of appearance, attended with no force of 
arms. Alone and single-handed, in the face of 
stinging contempt and bloodthirsty cruelty, it 
opposed ancient prejudices, long-settled habits, 
customs and religions, every consideration of self- 
interest or indulgence or safety, and swept them 
away like so many straws. By its simple, de- 
spised presence among men it conquered. It 
mattered not where it went; human society in 
every stage of development, under every form 
of administration, and composed of every race 
of men, everywhere alike yielded itself to it. 

We cannot overstate the case ; it is even im- 
possible for us to mentally realize the profundity 
of the change induced. Look only at the straws 
of external action which, veering suddenly around, 
advertise to us the change of wind beneath and 
behind. See the revolution in the sentiment 
which the sight of a cross kindled. 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 11 

Who can estimate, again, the profound revo- 
lution which was necessary in men's very habits 
of thought, in their inmost consciousness, before 
sacrificial ordinances could fall into neglect. Just 
think of it. From the beginning of the world 
sacrifices had been universal. Men knew, and 
had from the beginning known, no other way to 
express the deepest facts of their consciences. 
The habit had been ground in upon the race not 
only for a lifetime, but for a world time. Every- 
body everywhere spontaneously fled to this rite 
as the fit expression of the sense of sin and the 
hope of deliverance. And yet, in little more 
than fifty years after the introduction of Chris- 
tianity into his province, Pliny complains that 
it had almost put a stop to sacrifices there. A 
world-habit, dominant from the beginning, thus 
rolled back upon itself in a single generation ! 
We cannot possibly appreciate the greatness of 
this conquest. Sacrifices had been almost the 
whole life of the people : from childhood sacri- 
fices had met each man in every form, in every 
quarter, in every act, in every duty of every 
day's business. Not only could he not engage 
in any of the graver duties of the citizen with- 
out being confronted with them everywhere ; he 
could not rise from his bed in the morning, re- 
tire to it at night, partake of his necessary sus- 



12 THE* DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

tenance, without a recognition of a god or the 
performance of a rite at every step. And yet 
Christianity came, not undermining the princi- 
ple which underlay sacrifices, but emphasizing it, 
and still they fled away from its presence. 

Beneath such external changes, conceive, if 
you can, the immense revolution that was 
wrought. Not only was the whole practice of 
religion altered, but also the whole theory of 
religion ; not only the whole practice of morals, 
but the whole theory of morals. Vices in former 
repute were suddenly raised to the highest pinna- 
cle of virtues ; virtues in former repute were 
thrust down to the lowest hell of vices. Every- 
thing was overturned. 

Is it asked whether the human means employ- 
ed in gaining this grand victory were not suffi- 
cient to account for it? Look at them. A dozen 
ignorant peasants proclaiming a crucified Jew as 
the founder of a new faith ; bearing as the sym- 
bol of their worship an instrument which was 
the sign of ignominy, slavery and crime ; preach- 
ing what must have seemed an absurd doctrine 
of humility, patient suffering and love to ene- 
mies — graces undreamed of before; demanding 
what must have seemed an absurd worship for 
one who had died like a malefactor and a slave, 
and making what must have seemed an absurd 



THE DIVINE OKIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 13 

promise of everlasting life through one who had 
himself died, and that between two thieves. 

Did their voices fall on willing or docile ears ? 
This was the age of those princes of scoffers 
Celsus and Lucian. 

Did they prosecute their work in peace and 
quietude ? They were thrown to the lions until 
the very beasts were satiated with their prey. 
Their blood seemed only to water the field of 
the Lord. 

Thus, in the face of all discouragement and 
cruel persecution, the Bible found itself estab- 
lished with incredible rapidity in the hearts of 
an immense Christendom. In less than seventy 
years it was known over all the then known 
world ; within little more than a single century 
it had won to itself " almost the greater part of 
the whole state." 

Do you say that this, despite all appearances, 
must have been an exceptional age and an ex- 
ceptional experience ? We reply that it is the 
experience of the ages. When corruption had 
brought back an age of darkness and the Bible 
was once more lost from real life, it required but 
a Luther to tear off the veil for it to re-enact 
the same history and sow Europe with the blood 
of its votaries till a harvest could be reaped of 
equal victory. It cannot be necessary to repeat 
2 



14 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE, 

the story of the noble conflict. You know it 
well, and know that it was a Bible war and a 
Bible victory. The same history is even now 
working itself out about us. Madagascar, unde^ 
our eyes, has repeated it. Every corner of the 
globe has felt the tingling of the mighty im- 
pulse. Even here, in America, we are living 
amid historical wonders, our eyes unopened to 
the sight. Rapidly as the population of the 
United States has grown since 1800, the propor- 
tionate increase of the votaries of the Bible has 
outstripped it. Yet so quickly has it all been 
done that we live utterly oblivious of it until, 
through painfully gathered statistics, the fact is 
made to look us squarely in the face. 

How certain a fact, then, it is that the Bible 
has reached its present wonderful position and 
influence through a most remarkable history, 
and a history which it is still continuing on ex- 
actly the same lines ! 

4. It is important to note, next, that through- 
out all this history, and still to-day, this great 
influence which the Bible has exerted has been, 
and is still, purely and only beneficent. All its 
power has been exerted in the direction of the 
elevation of man and loving ministry to his 
needs. Of course we are in no danger of for- 
getting that the truth of this statement has been 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 15 

of late challenged in some quarters. But neither 
can we forget three other facts: 1. That it is not 
challenged by the well-informed and unpreju- 
diced even among those who deny the divine 
origin of the Bible. 2. That the methods by 
which it is attempted to make the Bible appear 
in any other role than that of a cornucopeia of 
good for man will (as Dr. Fisher has lately 
very clearly shown) avail equally to prove that 
love is a curse and the household fireside, with 
all its blessings, a very nest of corruption. Of 
course, it is not denied, either of love or of the 
Bible, that it sometimes has been the cause of 
pain ; each has often ennobled man through the 
pain and self-sacrifice called out by it. Nor is 
it denied of either that it has been made at times 
the excuse of crime, but both have cried out 
upon the wickedness which would hide behind 
their sacred skirts. 3. That those who put forth 
the challenge have been led to do it only be- 
cause the teaching of the Bible has so leavened 
society and the usages of modern life that it is 
almost impossible for men to believe that the 
world could ever have existed without the re- 
straining and ennobling influences which now 
seem naturally to dominate us, and yet which 
really have their root in the Bible. A true pic- 
ture of the boon which this book has really been 



16 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

to the world can be obtained only by an exam- 
ination of two classes of facts — those belonging 
to the condition of society before it entered into 
its beneficent reign on the one hand, and on the 
other those belonging to the condition into which 
society lapses whenever the Bible in any degree 
loses its hold upon men. The shamelessness of 
Roman society under the early emperors will 
give us the norm of the one ; the horrors of the 
Italian renascence and of the French Revolu- 
tion will give us the norm of the other. It is 
not necessary to stop now to pollute these pages 
with the recital of the depths of degradation 
from which the Bible rescued man, and from 
which its potent influence (witness the Italian 
renascence and the Reign of Terror) alone keeps 
him rescued : they may be read in any accred- 
ited history of the times, and it is certainly jus- 
tifiable to assume as fact what is recognized as 
fact by all competent historians. 

Thus, then, the Bible is seen to tread the ages 
like the fabled goddess under whose beneficent 
footfall sprang beautiful flowers wherever she 
went. Hospitals and asylums and refuges for 
the sick, the miserable and the afflicted grow 
like heaven-bedewed blossoms in its path. War, 
if it does not cease, becomes so ameliorated as 
to be scarcely recognizable as war compared with 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 17 

the brutal outbursts of past ages. Captured cities 
are fed with the rations of the conquering army ; 
captured combatants are tended with motherly 
care. Woman, whose equality with man Plato 
considered a sure mark of social disorganization, 
has been elevated ; slavery has been driven from 
civilized ground ; letters have been given by 
Christian missionaries, under the influence of 
the Bible and in order to its publication, to 
whole peoples and races. Who can estimate that 
boon ? Thus Cyril and Methodius gave alpha- 
bet and written language to the vast hordes of 
the Sclaves ; thus Ulphilas, to the whole race of 
Teutons; thus even Egypt, mother of letters, 
first received a manageable alphabet. Thus still 
to-day tribes and peoples sunk in barbarism are 
being lifted by the Bible to the ranks of literary 
nations. So the work goes on, and still to-day, 
as ever before, the Bible stands in all the w 7 orld 
exercising everywhere its immense power in the 
restraining of all evil passions, in the advance- 
ment of all that is good and tender and elevat- 
ing, in pouring out benefits unspeakable to the 
individual and the state. 

5. All this immense influence for good which 
the Bible is exercising over the minds and hearts 
of men is due to a most deep-seated and stead- 
fast conviction in their minds that it is from God 
2* 



18 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

and constitutes a law given from heaven for 
amending the lives and ameliorating the condi- 
tion of men. 

If this be a fanaticism, it is a most beneficent 
and a most remarkable fanaticism, far from easy 
to account for on the hypothesis that it is a fanat- 
icism. Did men rush to embrace a delusion 
which had nothing to commend it to them amid 
the scoffs of Celsus and the ridicule of Lucian, 
against their every interest and against their 
every inclination, and that when the majesty of 
Rome was unsheathed to fright them back and 
the jaws of the lions yawned to engulf them? 
Men do not usually spring so to die for a delu- 
sion which offers so little and threatens so much. 
Then, too, how has the fanaticism so grown? 
How is it that it still holds captive so many mil- 
lions of those whose intellect is of the clearest 
and whose culture is of the highest ? How is it 
that it still embraces the civilized world ? But, 
however it be attempted to account for it, here is 
the fact. The great influence which the Bible 
has ever exercised has been always, and still is, 
accounted for by those who yield to it on their 
sincere conviction that this book, which differs 
so in power from all other volumes, differs from 
them equally in origin, being alone of books 
God's book, while all others are men's. 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 19 

6. This conviction is traced by them not solely 
to the visible power and influence of the book, 
nor solely, conjoined with that, to the manifest 
grandeur and divinity of its contents and cha- 
racter, but also (continuing to dwell now on ex- 
ternal particulars) to marvelous circumstances 
which attended the giving of this marvelous 
book to the world. Those who wrote its latter 
portion and sent the whole abroad asserted that 
they acted under commission from God and 
authenticated their mission by a series of as- 
tounding miracles. Thus the miracle of the book 
is appropriately believed to have sprung from 
the centre of a God-endowed company. 

We cannot pause now to prove that these mir- 
acles really occurred. All that can be said is 
that the testimony they rest on is irrefragable, 
and that they must be admitted to have occurred 
or the foundations of all history are swept away 
at a stroke. It is enough here to note how ap- 
propriately the wonderful history which has been 
wrought out by the Bible is made to spring from 
open miracles. All is here consistent and ap- 
propriate ; and if those miracles which are as- 
serted to have happened really happened, all is 
explained and constitutes a harmonious whole. 
Otherwise, we are landed in great difficulties and 
inconsistencies. 



20 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

If we will ponder the facts which we have so 
boldly stated, it seems that we must conclude 
that the external history of this book is such as 
will so harmonize with a supernatural origin for 
it as to take away all strangeness from the asser- 
tion of such an origin. And what is that but 
saying that the history of the book suggests a 
supernatural origin for it — even raises a pre- 
sumption in favor of such an origin for it ? This 
book is certainly unique in the power it possesses : 
is it not unique in its source of power ? It is 
certainly furnished with an influence possessed 
by no other book. Whence came it ? 

II. The Structure of the Bible. 

And now let us open the volume and see what 
kind of a book this is which has exerted such 
remarkable power through so long and so won- 
derful a history. We have all, doubtless, a no- 
tion of the kind of book a volume is likely to be 
which will exercise vast influence over men — a 
masterly argument, say, well ordered and set 
foursquare against all possible opposition, each 
part fitted with consummate skill to each other 
part, and the whole driven with relentless force 
and unswerving purpose straight to the intended 
goal ; or a fervid appeal, say, based on the primal 
emotions of the heart, with burning and well- 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 21 

chosen words touching each string of that mystic 
harp, beating out from them all one burst of 
answering music. A consummate master of 
thought and speech may be thus conceived of 
as so catching the human heart as to hold it 
almost permanently. Yet his influence would 
be limited — notably, by this : the radius of the 
circle of his sympathies. Certainly no man has 
yet arisen able to frame a writing of universal 
and age-long influence, simply because no one 
has arisen yet wholly above the environment of 
the social customs and age-influence in which he 
was bred. And certainly it is inconceivable that 
a book should exert great influence over a wide 
expanse of territory and through long stretches 
of time which was not consciously framed for 
influence by an intelligent and competent mind. 
All this being true, it is assuredly worth our 
most serious attention that the Bible is the only 
book in existence which has any pretensions to 
being universal and lasting in its influence ; and 
yet, if it be not of superhuman origin, it could 
not have been framed consciously for influence. 
Let us look into this fact somewhat more closely. 
7. On first throwing open this wonderful vol- 
ume we are struck immediately with the fact 
that it is not a book, but rather a congeries of 
books. No less than sixty-six separate books, 



22 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

one of which consists itself of one hundred and 
fifty separate compositions, immediately stare us 
in the face. These treatises come from the hands 
of at least thirty distinct writers, scattered over 
a period of some fifteen hundred years, and em- 
brace specimens of nearly every kind of writing 
known among men. Histories, codes of law, 
ethical maxims, philosophical treatises, discourses, 
dramas, songs, hymns, epics, biographies, letters 
both official and personal, vaticinations, — every 
kind of composition known beneath heaven seems 
gathered here in one volume. 

Their writers, too, were of like diverse kinds. 
The time of their labors stretches from the hoary 
past of Egypt to and beyond the bright splendor 
of Rome under Augustus. They appear to have 
been of every sort of temperament, of every de- 
gree of endowment, of every time of life, of 
every grade of attain ment, of every condition in 
the social scale. Looked at from a purely ex- 
ternal point of view, the volume is a rough bale 
of drift from the sea of Time, a conglomerate of 
debris brought down by the waters and cast in a 
heap together. Nay, not only are there hetero- 
geneous, but seemingly positively conflicting, ele- 
ments in it. One half is a mass of Hebrew 
writings held sacred by a race which cannot 
look with patience on the other half, which is a 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 23 

mass of Greek writings claiming to set aside the 
legislation of a large part of its fellow. Yet it 
is this congeries of volumes which has had, and 
still has, this immense influence. The Hebrew 
half never conquered the world until the Greek 
half was added to it; the Greek half did not 
conquer save by the aid of the Hebrew half. 
The whole mass, in all its divinity, has attained 
the kingship. 

The question which will not down is, Can the 
miraculous power of this book be explained by 
the measure of power to which other books are 
able to attain? Where does this book, seemingly 
thus cast together by some whirlpool of time, get 
its influence ? If influence is not natural to such 
a volume, must it not point to something super- 
natural in it ? Whence came it ? 

8. We may look, however, on a still greater 
wonder. Let us once penetrate beneath all this 
primal diversity and observe the internal cha- 
racter of the volume, and a most striking unity 
is found to pervade the whole ; so that, in spite 
of having been thus made up of such diverse 
parts, it forms but one organic whole. The parts 
are so linked together that the absence of any 
one book would introduce confusion and disor- 
der. The same doctrine is taught from begin- 
ning to end, running like a golden thread through 



24 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

the whole and stringing book after book upon 
itself like so many pearls. Each book, indeed, 
adds something in clearness, definition, or even 
increment, to what the others proclaim ; but the 
development is orderly and constantly progress- 
ive. One step leads naturally to the next; the 
pearls are certainly chosen in the order of string- 
ing. 

An unbroken historical continuity pervades 
the whole book. It is even astonishing how ac- 
curately the parts historically dovetail together, 
jog to jog, into one connected and consistent 
whole. Malachi ends with a finger-post pointing 
through the silent ages to a path clearly seen in 
the Gospels. The New Testament fits on to the 
Old silently and noiselessly, but exactly, just as 
one stone of the Jewish temple fitted its fellow 
prepared for it by exact measurement in the 
quarries ; so that, on any careful consideration 
of the two coexisting phenomena — utter diversity 
in origin of these books, and yet utter nicety of 
combination of one with all — it is as impossible 
to doubt that they were meant each for the other, 
were consciously framed each for its place, as it 
is to doubt that the various parts of a compli- 
cated machine, when brought from the factory 
and set up in its place of future usefulness, were 
all carefully framed for one another. 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 25 

But just see where this lands us. Unless we 
are prepared to allow to a man some fifteen hun- 
dred years of conscious existence and intellectual 
supervision of the work, we are shut up here to 
the admission of a superhuman origin for this 
book. It is difficult to see how this argument 
can be really escaped. It will be perceived that 
it is analogous to what is often urged from the 
phenomena of the natural universe to prove for 
it a divine origin. Indeed, all the arguments 
urged in the one sphere are also capable of being 
urged in the other. The gradual framing of the 
Bible through a period of fifteen hundred years 
excludes human supervision. Now, the Bible, 
as a whole, is a result or an effect in the universe, 
and it must have had, as such, an adequate 
cause, which, since the result is an intelligent 
one, must have been an intelligent cause : there 
is the ontological argument, and it proves a 
superhuman intelligent cause for the Bible. It 
consists of orderly arranged parts, of an orderly 
developed scheme: there is the cosmological 
argument, and again it proves the activity of an 
intelligent cause (and much else not now to be 
brought out) of at least fifteen hundred years' 
duration. It is itself a cause of marvelous 
effects in the world for the production of which 
it is most admirably designed, and its whole 



26 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

inner harmony and all its inner relations are 
most deeply graven with the marks of a design 
kept constantly before some intelligent mind for 
at least fifteen hundred years : there is the argu- 
ment from design, attaining equally far-reaching 
and cogent conclusions as in the realm of nature. 
The analogy need not, however, be drawn out 
farther. An atheist of the present day spoke 
only sober truth when he declared that the di- 
vine origin of the Bible and the divine origin of 
the world must stand or fall together. The 
arguments which will prove the one prove also 
the other. Butler proved this proposition long 
ago. It stands indubitable; so that absolute 
atheism or Christianity must be our only choice. 
9. Another point in which the unity of the 
Bible is strikingly apparent needs our attention 
next : amid all the diversity of its subject-mat- 
ter, it may yet be said that almost the whole 
book is taken up with the portraiture of one per- 
son. On its first page he comes for a moment 
before our astonished eyes ; on the last he lingers 
still before their adoring gaze. And from that 
first word in Genesis which describes him as the 
" seed of the woman " and at the same time her 
deliverer — with occasional moments of absence, 
just as the principal character of a play is not 
always on the stage, and yet w 7 ith constant de- 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 27 

velopment of character — to the end, where he is 
discovered sitting on the great white throne and 
judging the nations, the one consistent but grad- 
ually developed portraiture grows before our 
eyes. Not a false stroke is made. Every touch 
of the pencil is placed just where it ought to 
stand as part of the whole. There is nowhere 
the slightest trace of wavering or hesitancy of 
hand. The draughtsman is certainly a consum- 
mate artist. And, as the result of it all, the 
world is possessed of the strongest, most consist- 
ent, most noble literary portraiture to be found 
in all her literature. 

Yet we are asked to believe that this grand 
result has been attained, not by the skilled lim- 
ning of a Michel Angelo, but by the disconnected 
dabblings of a score and a half of untrained 
forgers, who, moreover, were ever at cross-pur- 
poses with each other. Why, if the creation 
and successful dramatization, through a few 
short years, of such a character as Hamlet 
required the genius of a Shakespeare, what 
genius was required for this astoundingly suc- 
cessful creation and dramatization of such a 
character as that of the God-man through the 
ages of ages and seons of aeons — from the time 
when at his Father's side he sat, coequal with 
him, before all worlds, to the time when these 



28 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

same worlds shall be swallowed up in the final 
fire ! One should certainly rather risk his san- 
ity in the assertion that the play of Hamlet had 
formed itself by the fortuitous concourse of the 
alphabetical signs and made its own portraiture 
of the subtle Dane, than on the assertion that 
this portraiture of the God-man had been at- 
tained apart from the constant supervision and 
active labor of a consummate mind. If we 
should thus consider this portraiture only as a 
fiction, it would demand for its author some- 
thing more than has yet been seen in man. As 
it is undeniable now that it occupies the chief- 
est portion of the Bible from Genesis to Reve- 
lation, and binds the portions it occupies to- 
gether as a consistent dramatization of itself, it 
is equally undeniable that these portions of the 
Bible, at any rate, owe their origin to a mind 
able to superintend their composition for at least 
fifteen hundred years with a genius hitherto un- 
exampled among men. 

10. One other bond of connection between the 
parts of the volume must needs be adverted to 
briefly — that formed by numerous predictions 
of coming events given in the earlier portions, 
and accounts of the fulfillment of them in later 
portions, by which these later portions are 
proved to be but the intended outgrowth and 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 29 

conclusion of the former. These predictions 
run through an immense range both of time and 
of circumstance, and are made too precise and 
detailed in form, and too precise and detailed in 
the account of their fulfillment, for it to be pos- 
sible to doubt, on the one hand, that they were 
real predictions, or, on the other, that they were 
really fulfilled. Thus the various books are 
drawn close together ; and if the Bible, exter- 
nally considered, may be likened to a bale of 
drift, these prophecies, given in one part and 
reaching their fulfillment in another, are the 
strong cords which bind the bale securely to- 
gether and make it one whole. The unity in- 
duced by this means is, indeed, complete and 
most conclusive to its own divine origin. 

11. Thus we are led to appeal to prophecy, 
and that not only to prove the unity of the plan 
of Scripture, but, independent of and far above 
that — by its very nature as prediction of things 
yet hidden in the future — as an irrefragable 
proof of the divine origin of the whole of the 
closely-knit volume in which it finds place. It 
is not a function of human intellect to read the 
secrets of unborn ages ; and the existence in this 
book of accurate, detailed predictions of even 
unimportant and certainly incalculable events 
of the far future demonstrates its divine origin. 
3* 



30 THE DIVINE OEIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

It is, of course, impossible in this brief essay 
to illustrate the character and convincingness 
of Scripture prophecy, or even to indicate in- 
stances of its unquestionable fulfillment in de- 
tail. Were there space, we might point to the 
immense number of independent predictions, 
seemingly opposite, or even contradictory, to 
one another, before their fulfillment, found on 
the coming of Christ to be harmoniously gath- 
ered up and fulfilled in his unique personality 
and work — predictions covering not only the 
great outlines of his work and the marked traits 
of his person, but publishing ages beforehand 
the very village in which he should first see the 
light, the homage on the one hand, and the abuse 
on the other, which he should receive, the life 
he should live and the death he should die, even 
to the most minute description of the pains he 
should suffer and the scoffs he should endure as 
he hung upon the tree — yea, even the exact price 
of his blood and fate of his betrayer. Or, again, 
we might point to that ever-living witness to the 
truth of prophecy in the Jewish race upon whom 
everything that has been prophesied has been 
and is being duly fulfilled ; or, again, to an in- 
finite multitude of minute details of predictions 
touching many races and nations which have 
with infinite might fulfilled themselves every- 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 31 

where. Space would fail, however, for such an 
enumeration. And it is the less necessary, now 
that the feverish efforts, on the part of those who 
wish to escape from the power of the Bible, to 
assign later dates to the prophetical books than 
most cogent proof from many quarters will allow, 
amount to an admission that the prophetical ele- 
ment in them cannot be denied. In prophecy, 
therefore, we have a continual miracle set in the 
midst of the Bible, to stand in all ages as a sure 
proof that it comes from God. As each predic- 
tion is in turn fulfilled before the eyes of each 
age which witnesses it, a miracle performs itself 
(and attests itself in the act) which is as cogent 
and sufficient evidence of the divine origin of the 
Bible as if all the miracles of the apostolical 
age were rewrought in our presence to reaffirm 
its teaching. Thus we see, in perhaps a new 
light, the meaning of our Lord's pregnant say- 
ing : " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, 
neither will they be persuaded, though one rise 
from the dead." 

As, then, when we considered the external his- 
tory of the Bible, we were driven back, step by 
step, through marvelous circumstances to open 
miracles of power proclaiming and demonstrat- 
ing the divine origin of the book, so here, as soon 
as we look within it in even the most cursory 



32 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

way, we repeat the same process and move back 
from marvel to marvel, until we reach the open 
miracle of prophecy, again independently proving 
the divine origin of the book after a fashion which 
cannot be escaped or legitimately questioned. 

III. The Teaching of the Bible. 

The same process is only again repeated, and 
cumulative evidence for the divine origin of the 
Bible obtained, when we look somewhat deeper 
into its contents and ask after the character and 
witness of its teaching — a subject broad as the 
earth itself and full of self-evidence, but upon 
which we have as yet not even cast a glance. 
The character and the nature of the contents of 
the Bible alone are enough to prove its divine 
origin. If men cannot have made the miracles 
of power by which its publication to the world 
was accompanied, nor the miracles of prophecy 
by which its progress through the world has 
been accompanied, no more can they have manu- 
factured the miracles of teaching of which its 
contents consist. Independently of all other 
evidence, the miracle of the contents demands a 
divine origin. This, again, may be made plainer 
by some specifications, which again, however, 
must be presented in a very naked and frag- 
mentary way. 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 33 

12. Let us note, then, first of all, the un- 
speakable elevation and grandeur both of the 
teaching itself which this book presents and of 
the assumptions on which it bases that teaching. 

The conception of God which is here pre- 
sented — how unutterably divine is it ! Apart 
from the Bible, man has never reached to such 
a conception. This element of it, and that ele- 
ment of it, has, indeed, through the voice of 
nature, separately dawned upon his soul ; but 
the complete ideal is conveyed to him only by 
this book. Infinite and eternal spirit — pure and 
ineffable — unlimited by matter, or space or time, 
infinite, eternal and unchangeable in essence and 
attributes ! And what a circle of attributes ! 
Infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite justice, 
infinite holiness, infinite goodness, infinite mercy, 
infinite pity, infinite love ! Verily, if this con- 
ception be not a true image of a really existent 
God, the human heart must say it ought to be. 
And this is the conception of God which the 
Bible holds up before us — more than that, which 
it dramatizes through an infinite series of infin- 
itely varied actions through a period of millen- 
niums of years in perfect consistency of character. 
Everywhere in its pages God appears as the all- 
powerful, all- wise, necessarily just and holy One; 
everywhere as the all-good, all-merciful, neces- 



34 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

sarily pitiful and loving One. Never is a single 
one of these ineffable perfections lost or hidden 
or veiled. 

The Bible's conception of the nature of man 
is of like nobility. Framed in the image of 
God, he was made like him not only in the 
passive qualities, but also in his endowment of 
active capacities. Even freedom of action — un- 
bound ability to choose his own future — were 
placed in his grasp. So, also, the Bible's teach- 
ing as to the duties that man, even after he has 
made his fatal choice, owes to God and his neigh- 
bor, all founded on the principle of love; its 
teaching as to the possibilities before man and 
the destiny in store for him, culminating in the 
possibility of his enthronement as co-ruler of the 
universe with his divine Redeemer ; its teaching 
as to the relation of man to the physical and 
irrational universe as responsible head over it ; 
its teaching as to the origin of this universe it- 
self and its purpose and destiny, — all reach the 
acme of grandeur. These instances must serve 
us as specimens of the grandeur of its teaching. 

13. We must note, still further, that both the 
general tenor of the Bible and its special asser- 
tions are all in precise accord "with what the 
profoundest learning shows to be the actual state 
of the universe, as well as what the deepest and 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 35 

largest experience establishes as the actual course 
of nature." And it is a very pertinent question 
how it happens that the Bible was able, alone 
of ancient books, to forestall the conclusions of 
the latest science of the nineteenth century. It 
has taken scientific thought up to to-day to bring 
its conceptions of the origin of the world to the 
point at which Moses stood some three millen- 
niums ago. This, again, must serve us now as 
a specimen fact (among a multitude) proving 
that " whoever wrote this book knew more than 
we know, and knew it distinctly when we knew 
nothing." 

Yet, although possessed of a knowledge thus 
unspeakably advanced beyond all of their time, 
the writers of this book do not seem to have been 
proud of their possession or anxious to display 
it; they do not even formally transmit their 
knowledge, but simply act and speak on its pre- 
supposition; so that when we reach an equal 
stage of advancement to theirs, without having 
been hitherto conscious of its presence, we sud- 
denly find it there continually implied and con- 
stantly underlying every part. It is thus always 
most deeply felt by those most conversant with 
the progress of knowledge, and yet does not in 
any degree clog the understanding of the book 
for the purpose for which it was given by those 



36 THE DIVINE OEIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

who are as yet ignorant of the basis of physical 
or philosophical fact assumed. 

14. Thus we are led to take note of another 
general characteristic of biblical teaching — the 
fact that all its great truths are universal truths ; 
i. e., truths capable of reaching and making en- 
trance into and taking a strong hold upon the 
heart of man as man, and of all men equally, 
independently of their race-affinities, intellectual 
advancement or social standing. That this should 
be so is undoubtedly a great wonder, and it is 
redoubled when we remember that it is correlated 
with great and remarkable knowledge. Usually, 
when the profound philosopher speaks, he needs 
philosophers for his audience ; and yet here is a 
book which naturally and without effort betrays 
acquaintance with the deepest reaches of modern 
discovery, and yet in its every accent speaks 
home to the child as readily as to the sage. 

In still another respect this same fact — name- 
ly, that the truths of the Bible " find us " — has 
probative force, since, herefrom, it is equally 
evident that the Bible is suited to man and that 
its asserted truths are instinctively recognized 
by man as actual truths. The Bible thus cer- 
tainly comes with a message to man — one that 
is recognized by each man who needs its words 
as specially for him, and that is witnessed to 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 37 

instinctively by each as true. How does it hap- 
pen that this book, alone among books, reaches 
the heart alike of the Bushman and of a New- 
ton ? of a savage lost in the horrors of savagery 
and of a Faraday sitting aloft on the calm and 
clear if somewhat chill heights of science? This 
universality of effect seems to prove a corre- 
sponding universality of intention. But who 
of men has ever been able to hold before him 
as recipients of his book all men of all ages? 
Who has been able to calculate upon the hearts 
and characters of men removed from him by 
such stretches of both time and circumstance? 
Who could have been able to adapt a message 
penned in a corner, ages agoue, to the mental 
position of the nineteenth century and the hearts 
of a Newton and a Faraday ? Yet we must 
assume for the Bible an author who was capable 
of this. Was Moses capable of it? Was an 
anonymous forger of his name ? 

15. We must, however, turn to note another 
general characteristic of Scripture — the remark- 
able simplicity of its manner and the transparent 
honesty of its tone ; so that its words, even when 
describing the most utter marvels, possess that 
calm, quiet ring which stamps them with indu- 
bitable truthfulness. If we are asked why we 
trust a friend in whom we have every confi- 
4 



38 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 



dence, and credit his every statement, we may 
be somewhat at a loss for a definite answer. 
" We know him," we say. This same evidence 
is good also for a book. We may judge of the 
truthfulness of men's writings by all those little 
intangible characteristics which when united go 
toward making a very strong impression of 
actual proof, but which one by one are almost 
too small to adduce or even notice, just as we 
may judge of the trustiness of men's characters 
by all the innumerable looks, gestures, chance 
expressions, little circumstances which make their 
due impression on us. Combined, they are con- 
vincing, though each by itself might seem am- 
biguous or valueless. The conclusion in each 
case is, however, valid and rational, and the 
evidence is unmistakably good evidence. Now, 
for the Bible, this evidence is unusually strong; 
and thus it happens that men who do not know 
how to reason, and who are incapable of follow- 
ing a closely-reasoned argument, are accepting 
the Bible on all sides of us on truly rational 
and valid evidence, and accepting it on like evi- 
dence as divine. They are continually reading 
accounts of miracles so numerous and so striking 
that the witnesses of them could not be mistaken ; 
so embedded in a narrative of such artlessness, 
gravity, honesty, intelligence, straightforward- 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 39 

ness as palpably to be neither fraud nor fancy 
that they form part and parcel of it and are 
absolutely inseparable from it ; so embedded in 
a narrative which approves itself by a thousand 
simple and inimitable hints aud traits to be 
transparently truthful and trustworthy that they 
must stand or fall with it. Now, this is most 
rational evidence, and evidence so strong that it 
is as difficult for the honest mind to resist it as 
it is for us to express it. 

16. It becomes surely, then, of sufficient im- 
portance to justify special notice that in the 
midst of this narrative, and scattered all through 
it, we find calm and simple, but frequent, con- 
stant, and steadfast, assertions of a divine origin 
for itself. So honest and transparently truthful 
a narrative, filled with marks everywhere of 
superhuman knowledge, naturally enough does 
not, in the pride of human nature, claim all this 
superhuman knowledge for its human authors, 
but ascribes it all to God ; naturally enough 
empties its human authors of any credit for 
knowledge before the time of knowledge and 
plans beyond the reach of man and ascribes it 
all to God. And its very honesty and simplicity 
of statement, the transparent honesty of this 
statement, proves the assertion truthful and 
trustworthy. Here, then, once more, we reach 



40 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

through orderly steps, exhibiting at each stage 
marks of God's hand, the assertion of a divine 
origin ; here, once more, after walking through 
the aisles and nave and choir of a grand cathe- 
dral filled all along with the marks of genius in 
its planning and execution, we reach again the 
wall, and, lo ! on it the marks of the chisel and 
the superscription of the Architect that prove 
it was made by a competent mind and did not 
grow. 

It is very difficult to see but that the argu- 
ment, if fully drawn out and illustrated, is con- 
clusive. 

IV. Special Characteristics of the Bible. 

Another, and an even more cogent, argument 
might be presented from a consideration of some 
special characteristics either of the whole Bible 
or of some of its parts — an argument hitherto 
untouched. This argument would soon, how- 
ever, grow much too vast to be included in this 
essay. We must content^ ourselves with only 
pointing at a distance to only one particular 
which might, were there space, be urged most 
convincingly. 

17. We refer to the progressive character of the 
teaching included in this book, with the special 
cases which might be adduced under that head. 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 41 

It begins with first principles expressed in out- 
ward symbol, and advances gradually to the full 
system, working out its approaches in history 
before delivering it in dogma. We do not urge 
simply that this progressive scheme is consistent 
with a divine origin for it; we urge that this 
supremely wise method of delivering truth and 
training a people, taken in connection with the 
unity of the system throughout the whole, is 
consistent with nothing else. No doctrinaire 
made this Bible — see what kind of work they 
do in the history of Middle- Age Florence and 
Revolutionary France — but a most consummate 
statesman who knew what was in man and how 
to mould him to his purposes. 

We would appeal, in this connection — pro- 
gressiveness — specially to the practical and prac- 
ticable character of Old-Testament legislation. 
And thus w T e are led to assert that those very 
passages concerning polygamy and kindred themes 
(which have been made an occasion of gibe against 
the Scriptures) are themselves a most cogent ar- 
gument for their divine origin. We Americans 
ought to know by this time that the best way to 
secure polygamy unharmed and enshrine it un- 
conquerably under the protection of a nation is 
to write on the statute-books inoperative laws 
against it. The Bible was framed by too wise 
4* 



42 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

a statesman to fall into that error, and we who 
enjoy Christian homes to-day have to thank God 
for it. The unspeakable wisdom of dealing at 
that age, and under those circumstances, with 
polygamy, divorce, slavery by regulative laws, 
which in regulating discouraged, and in dis- 
couraging destroyed them, makes strongly for 
a superhuman origin of the legislation. 

So, again, growing out of this same progress- 
ive system, we could appeal most strongly to the 
ritualistic system of symbolical worship given 
to the Jews and by law secured from failure, by 
which object-lessons — all schoolmasters to lead 
to something better and higher — were inefface- 
ably taught to a whole nation, which was thus 
prepared to receive the spiritual lesson meant 
for it. 

Still again we should appeal to the wise 
method of New-Testament legislation through 
great principles rather than specific ordinances, 
thus securing absolute universality in connection 
with perfect definiteness ; or again to the re- 
markable tenderness and beauty of this legisla- 
tion, especially apparent in the cases of slaves, 
wives and children and temporal rulers — a phe- 
nomenon in the age when it was given enough of 
itself to suggest a divine origin for the one book 
which contains it; or still again to the wise 



THE DIVIDE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 43 

silence of the same legislation on many subjects 
on which it must have been very tempting then 
to legislate, but legislation on which we can" see 
now would have imperiled the success of the 
main purpose for which the book was given and 
obtained no corresponding gain. 

On all these and like points, however, it is not 
now possible to touch. We pass on, therefore, 
to our last remark. 

V. Impossibility of Accounting for the 
Bible. 

18. That the Bible, thus standing in the world, 
being of such sort, and having had such a his- 
tory, has yet to be accounted for on the hypoth- 
esis that it had only a human origin. Here it 
stands, just such a fact in the universe, a sub- 
stantive thing, tangible and that can be exam- 
ined. The ingenuity of men has been fever- 
ishly busy with it these hundreds of years. Yet 
the world still awaits a theory which will render 
an adequate account of it on any other hypoth- 
esis than that it came from God. Theories have 
been attempted, but one after another they have 
broken down of their own weight or have had 
justice executed upon them by fellow-unbeliev- 
ing hands amid the plaudits of all men of all 
parties. Thus it happens that up to to-day no 



44 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

hypothesis except that of superhuman interfer- 
ence has been able to stand a half century as an 
account of the origin of this book. What is this 
but the confession that without the assumption 
of superhuman interference this book cannot be 
accounted for ? that these miraculous claims and 
these miraculous assertions cannot be rationally 
or satisfactorily explained away ? Look for one 
moment at the efforts made to account on natural 
grounds for the miraculous element in the New 
Testament. First, a school arose which tried to 
work on the assumption that whenever a miracle 
is recorded the event described did really happen, 
indeed, but that it has been exaggeratedly and 
mistakenly described as miraculous, and not 
merely natural, by the New-Testament writers. 
The sick were healed, but by medicinal means ; 
the dead were raised, but only from seeming, not 
real, death. That attempt to explain aw 7 ay the 
miraculous failed, as requiring as great a series 
of miracles of wonderful coincidences as it ex- 
plained away. Another then arose which wished 
to account for it all as a series of myths, holding 
that there was a kernel of truth in each event 
described, but that this kernel had gathered 
much falsehood around it as it rolled through 
time, from mouth to mouth, before it got record- 
ed in our Bible, just as a snowball grows almost 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 45 

unrecognizably greater as it rolls down a long 
slope. But this attempt was wrecked hopelessly 
on the lack of a soil for the myths to grow r in 
(that is, of snow to frame the balls of) and of 
time for them to increase in (that is, of any 
hill for them to roll down). Then another 
rose on its ruins — an elaborate theory of party 
strifes and forgeries and reforgeries of books in 
every conceivable interest ; so that the same ma- 
terial was worked over and over again by false 
and designing men, to serve each new notion, 
until the final outcome was our New Testament. 
Again this theory was wrecked on the lack of 
time for all this elaborate process before the date 
at which adequate proof is in hand for the exist- 
ence of the books. The whole elaborate scheme 
falls with the failure of the attempted rape of 
the second century. It cannot be true unless 
all history is false. 

Time , is lacking for the New Testament to 
have grown in, if considered a product of time ; 
whence, then, came it? Soil is lacking for it 
to have developed in, if considered a human de- 
velopment; then, whence came it? All schemes 
which have hitherto been invented to account for 
its origin without God have pitiably failed, and 
there is no particular reason to look for anything 
more cogent to be advanced in the future. If, 



46 THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 

however, this book cannot be accounted for apart 
from God, we seem shut up to account for it as 
from him. Certainly, the only rational course 
is to accept it as from him until it is able to be 
rationally accounted for without his interference. 

With this we may fitly close our inquiry. 
The query with w 7 hich we started seems abun- 
dantly answered. A supernatural origin for the 
Bible appears cumulatively proven. 

In closing, it would be well for us to take note 
of one or two facts in regard to the argument 
which has been offered. Let it be observed, 
then: 

1. That no attempt has been made to distin- 
guish between a superhuman and a divine origin 
for the Bible. This is not because the two are 
not separable, but only because they are, in our 
present argument, practically the same. 

2. That no attempt has been made to distin- 
guish between the divine origin of the system 
and that of the books recording that system. 
This, again, is not because the two are not sepa- 
rable, but only because, so far as the argument 
has been pressed — jthough not much farther — 
the two need not be practically separated. 

3. That no question has been raised as to the 
extent of the divine in the Bible. This is due 
to three facts : Because this question need not be 



THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 47 

raised primarily for the establishment of the 
faith, but is necessarily a consequent one to be 
raised after the general divine origin of the book 
is admitted ; because, again, the humble Chris- 
tian often looks upon and draws life from the 
Bible without raising this question, simply ac- 
cepting what he reads as divinely given to 
strengthen his faith ; and because, again, it 
was impossible in one essay to treat both ques- 
tions. 

4. That, nevertheless, the facts and arguments 
which have been adduced in a general way to 
prove the general divine origin of the Bible not 
only prepare the way, but even, narrowly ques- 
tioned, will raise a strong presumption, for the 
further conclusions that this book has been not 
only in a general way given by God, but also 
specifically inspired in the giving, that thus its 
every word is from him, and that it is worthy 
of our reverent and loving credence in its every 
particular. 



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